Modern Information Technology (IT) organizations typically have administrators managing systems within their IT infrastructure. As part of their responsibilities, administrators of the IT infrastructure maintain the servers, routers, and applications according to the demands of the business. For example, an IT infrastructure can include computers that manipulate and store stock exchange data that must be available during trading hours. In some instances, trading hours are on a 24×7 schedule with respect to electronic stock trades. The records of these stock trades are typically stored on storage devices of the IT infrastructure.
It is inevitable that the stock trade records will eventually consume the full capacity of storage devices storing the stock trade records. One solution is to delete some records that are no longer required by the business. However, with 24×7 stock trades, this is a temporary solution because of the constant stream of data. Another solution is to add storage devices to increase storage capacity. Unfortunately, administrators adding a storage device results in taking computer systems offline in order to install the new storage device. Moreover, when offlining the storage devices, any data loss or data inaccessibility related to the offline event is unacceptable to stock traders.
Accordingly, any solution for adding storage capacity to an existing IT infrastructure should not disrupt normal business operations.